


Coming Home

by cosmogyrals



Category: Ashes to Ashes, Life on Mars (UK)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-11
Updated: 2013-03-11
Packaged: 2017-12-05 00:40:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/716884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmogyrals/pseuds/cosmogyrals
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A not quite canon compliant fic. It's 1990, and Gene and Annie are the only two left.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coming Home

_April 1990_

Ten bloody years in London is more than enough for anybody. It hurts a little, coming back to Manchester, but the pain is dulled by time - time and the application of far too much alcohol, as always. (The doctors have told him that he needs to stop drinking, but old habits are hard to break, especially when you have no intention of ever doing so.) The Railway Arms is deserted after work, one of the signs that Gene's era is dead and buried, and he's just a relic of the past wasting away behind a desk.

Even his mates are gone now - Chris and Shaz stayed back in London with little Sammy (whose middle name is, of course, Gene), and Ray, being Ray, didn't want to leave without Chris. So it's just Gene now, back in his city, but more alone than he's ever been before, and he doesn't want to admit how much he sodding _hates it_. There's a new bartender, even, some old bloke from the Lake District whose name Gene hasn't bothered to learn yet. He's taciturn, and they never really talk; Gene sits at a table in the corner and drinks in silence. He's used to reigning over his court like this, watching his men get pissed, learning all about them and the sort of people they are. But now his only drinking partners are the ghosts of his past, and ghosts are crap at covering their rounds, as Gene has discovered. 

The door swings open behind him; Gene doesn't look to see who it is. "You been down at th' prison again?" he asks.

Annie slides into the chair across from him, looking weary and drawn. The years have taken their toll on her, too; her chestnut hair is streaked with grey, and there are lines at the corners of her eyes and lips. "You know they want as many officers as we can spare, and that includes CID."

"Make 'ers double," Gene calls out to the bartender. He knows all about the orders; everything comes across his desk first. They'd all been there when the riots had first broken out the previous day; now only a few hundred prisoners remained, but it was still the police's responsibility to guard the area.

Annie grimaces a little at the taste of the scotch, but she's met him here enough that she's getting used to it by now - and, Gene thinks, she needs it. "Th' media bein' their usual charmin' selves?" he asks wryly. "Like th' bloody prisoners aren't givin' us enough trouble as it is." He's grown used to the media becoming the overzealous watchdogs they are, but that doesn't mean he has to like it.

"They want a representative of the media to act as an independent observer, and to release a list of their demands." Annie shrugs wearily. "They have a point, Guv. The early reports from them don't half make it look a mess, and we all know it's been overcrowded for years."

"An' what's that say about us, if we can't even treat rapists and murderers with the same respect we'd show any other living creature?" she continues quietly, looking down into her glass.

"That they're gettin' their just desserts," he counters. "Y' think a single bloody one o' them thought about treatin' people right, Annie? 'Cos you've seen the crime scenes an' the stiffs, interviewed th' witnesses, talked t' th' grievin' families." Gene's world is a simple one, one that demands an eye for an eye. Unfortunately for him, it's also one that's been left in the past.

"There's been riots at seven other prisons today and yesterday, and that's only the tip of the iceberg."

"D'you know 'ow many of those blokes we've put in there over th' years? Y' think that makes us responsible?" Fuck, Gene's too old for these arguments. He wonders when all the fire left him - life's worn him down over the years, life and a changing world that no longer has room for coppers like Gene. He hasn't been involved in an investigation the entire time he's been here; it's all been meetings and paperwork and rubbing elbows with Manchester's finest members of society.

"I haven't got all the answers, Guv, but I know what Sam would say." Annie shrugs, almost apologetically, and takes another drink; Sam is the trump card in any argument between them, if only because he's the elephant in the room that they never talk about.

She's right, of course, it _is_ what Sam - and Alex, for that matter - would say, and damn them, they'd guilt him into their way of thinking, the bloody stubborn nutters. Annie's the only conscience he's got left now, and she's a sweet thing, but she's not half the pain in the arse Tyler and Drake were.

Although then she slides the drink from out in front of him, and Gene briefly rethinks his opinion of her as she replaces it, quite pointedly, with a glass of Coke.

"Fuckin' Coke," he grumbles under his breath. That's the other problem with the lot of them, they always claim to know what's best for him. He's somewhat surprised Annie hasn't taken to stealing his smokes out of his pockets - he _knows_ where his flasks keep disappearing to, and he has half a mind to go pick the lock on the bottom drawer of her file cabinet and take them all back. "Can't be a copper without gettin' pissed, Annie, 's a bloody disgrace."

Annie rolls her eyes at him and leans back in the chair - but not before she adds the contents of his glass to her own, the cheeky woman.

"You aren't goin' t' be able t' drive, love," he advises her. She's never had a stomach for drink. She's a bird, after all, and a small one, at that. "An' you'll 'ave one 'ell of a 'angover t'morrow."

"Well, then, I'll just draw the shades and only come out to shout at anybody who dares to make the slightest noise."

Gene can't help but grin at that. "That's a girl. Learnt from th' best, you did."

She reaches across the table and takes his hand for a moment, her hand small and slender in his. "Still learnin', aren't I? I'll be after your job next - again, that is." Twenty years ago, Gene would've laughed if someone had told him Annie Cartwright would end up at the head of CID - of course, he'd always envisioned himself staying in the position for the rest of his career. But time changes everything - Annie's been married and widowed and kept moving up through the ranks, Gene's been to London and back, and everything he was familiar with is gone. Only the two of them are left.


End file.
